F 210 
.K7 
Copy 1 



Phi Beta Kappa 
Oration 



'THOU ART A SCHOLAR. SPEAK TO IT, HORATIO' 



DELIVERED BY 

LuciAN Lamar Knight 



BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA IN THE UNIVERSITY 
CHAPEL. AT ATHENS. DURING COM- 
MENCEMENT, ON MONDAY. 
JUNE 19. 1916 



Ph 



1 t^ETA IXAPPA 

Oratio 



THOU ART A SCHOLAR. SPEAK TO IT, HORATIO' 



DELIVERED BY 



LuciAN Lamar Knight 



BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA IN THE UNIVERSITY 
CHAPEL. AT ATHENS. DURING COM- 
MENCEMENT. ON MONDAY. 
JUNE 19. 1916 






FEB 25 T9f8 



PHI BETA KAPPA ORATION 

Delivei-ecl in the University Chapel, at Athens, Georgia, June 19, 1916, 
by Lucian Lamar Knight. 

Members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

There is music and music. But when all the keys have 
been touched and all the chords have been swept and all the 
minstrels have sung, it still remains that the sweetest of life's 
lingering strains is "Mother;" and, next to the mother who bore 
me on her breast, is the mother at whose parent knees we gather 
in this grand old. hall today. I love her for the memories of 
"auld lang syne." I love her for the splendid names with 
which she has starred the story of our State. I love her for these 
honored veterans of the board, who have so faithfully adminis- 
tered her temporal affairs. I love her for these learned doctors 
of the faculty, who have adorned her precepts of instruction 
mth the garnered wisdom of the ages. I love her for the friend- 
ships warm and tender with which she has enriched my life; 
and, after wandering up and down the earth, I can say, in the 
seasoned accents of experience, that, while many are the friends 
whom I have grappled to my soul with hoops of steel, the truest 
friends my heart has ever known, the friends of cloudj'^ days 
and of wintry weather, whose friendship amid the decay of 
other joys, has been an unchanging evergreen — aye, the shadow 
of a mighty rock in a weary land — are the friends with whom 
I clasped hands in youthful comradeship in the old Athenian 
days. 

Finer than the finest thread in Penelope's loom, yet stouter 
than the stoutest cord in the. bow of Ulysses, are the ties which 
bind these boys together. 

Brethren of the key, it is no mean distinction to be enrolled 
as members of Phi Beta Kappa. Ours is an ancient order found- 
ed upon scholarship. It reaches from ocean to ocean. Its his- 
tory is interwoven with the structure of our government ; its 
genius is embedded in our national literature; it is glorified 
by countless illustrious names. But doubly honored are we of 



Franklin College since, in addition to this distinguished fellow- 
ship, we hold our diplomas from the oldest State college on the 
continent of North America. 

Crowned with the honors of more than a hundred years, our 
alma mater is to us still young. The elixir of the gods has 
endowed her with perennial beauty. The fountain springs of 
knowledge — more exhilarating than the old Falernian — have 
made the roses perpetual in her cheeks and bedewed with im- 
mortality the morning-glories of her maiden loveliness. "Would 
that I today, in burning speech, might bring to her some tribute 
worthy of her altars. Would that in deeds more eloquent than 
words and out of a life ennobled by achievement I might bespeak 
the gratitude which, for a generation, has filled my heart to 
overflowing. Here in this hall whose memories bring to mind 
a Toombs, a Stephens, a Cobb, a Crawford, a Lumpkin, a Brown, 
a Gordon, a Hill, a Grady, I can only feel how small I am, 
how poorly I have played my part on the great world's stage 
of action. But, could I unite these matchless Georgians all in 
one and could I play on David's harp for Methuselah's thousand 
years I would still leave unanthemed what I cherish here for 
this dear old mother school. I cannot requite her with honor. 
I cannot even repay her \^ath love. But I can at least so 
square my life to the precepts she has taught me that no con- 
scious act of mine will ever plant a thorn in her breast or write 
a wrinkle upon her beautiful brow. 



Three centuries ago, in the little town of Stratford-on-the- 
Avon, there passed away the greatest poet of our English- 
speaking race. The world which Shakespeare painted for us is 
today involved in the mightiest war of all history. From Juliet's 
garden at Verona to Scotland's far-off hills of heather, there 
are new-made graves in every churchyard to tell of the conflict's 
bloody toll. The god of war has summoned all Europe to an 
Armageddon, the issues of which no prophet's eye can see. But 
amid the battle's shock and the cannon's roar, there rises a 
paean to humanity's master-minstrel; and from one of his im- 
mortal dramas I derive my text. 

On the castle grounds at Elsinore, in Denmark, the ghost 
of Hamlet's father was twice observed at midnight by the offi- 

4 



cers of the watch. The startling news was noised abroad. On 
the third evening, Horatio, a fellow-student of the Prince at 
Wittenberg, decides to sift this rumor by remaining awake with 
the castle guards, and when this strange apparition is again seen 
upon the ramparts Marcellus turns to him in suppressed excite- 
ment with this prayer : ' ' Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Ho- 
ratio. ' ' 

These are not the days of superstition, but our modern world 
is full of weird specters. It is not the unlettered or the igno- 
rant who must address them, but the scholar, one whose incisive 
mind can pierce the belt of mysteries. He alone can pronounce 
the cabalistic word. Some of these young gentlemen will be 
doctors of medicine. It is for them to speak to the specter of 
disease. Some will be disciples of Blackstone. It is for them 
to speak to the specter of crime. Some may be ministers of the 
gospel. It is for them to speak to the specter of infidelity, to 
dispel the shadows of conflict and to invoke upon this war-worn 
world the boon of peace. Some may aspire to political honors 
and emoluments. It is for them to speak to the specter of civic 
corruption and graft. 

But all will be scholars. Let us speak to the specter of un- 
truth. Aye, in this age of multiplied social centers, let us 
speak to the specter which is threatening the fireside. Not only 
the State, but the church was instituted in the family, and 
sweet with the Beulah-air of the Delectable Mountains should 
be the domestic hearthstone. Cherish it like the old Roman 
cherished his Penates. Guard it like the pure Vestal guarded 
her temple fires. More sacred to you and to me than the Palla- 
dium was to Troy, it is the Holy of Holies of our tabernacle in 
the wilderness. Go where you will up and down the earth, visit 
what lands you like, but let the sweet influences of the fireside 
grip you like the cables of the Great Eastern ; and, when you 
have drained life 's goblet to the lees, know thou that the dearest 
word ever coined by the Anglo-Saxon is "Mother" and the 
sweetest song ever caught from beyond the stars is "Home, 
Sweet Home." 



But there are specters and specters. Not long since my 
attention was called to a libelous article upon the South in the 
twentieth century edition of a standard encyclopedia. On the 

5 



subject of Americau Literature, I found to my utter amaze- 
ment these statements : ( 1 ) that, since the days of the Revolu- 
tion, the few thinkers born south of the Mason and Dixon's 
line have been outnumbered by those of the single State of 
Massachusetts; (2) that even this small contingent have com- 
monly migrated either to New York or to Boston for an educa- 
tion ; (3) that, chiefly in the world of letters, but also in the 
world of statesmanship and of arms the Southern States have 
shone by reflected light; (4) that, mainly by contact with the 
North have the Carolinas been kept from dwindling to the level 
of Mexico; (5) that, whether we look to India or to Louisiana, 
the tropical sun takes the poetic fire out of Anglo-Saxon veins; 
(6) that indolence, which is everywhere a concomitant of des- 
potism, produces the same benumbing effect; (7) that the 
Southern planter, lounging among his slaves, was like a Spartan 
. surrounded by his helots; and (8) that such was the paralyzing 
sense of the slave-owner's superiority that it made him abso- 
lutely dead to art. 

Shades of Gulliver ! If the writer who penned this amazing 
diatribe upon the South is to be believed, then Baron Munch- 
ausen was a maker of sacred proverbs and old Ananias himself 
w^s a martyr to the truth. I venture to say that since Caxton 
invented the art preservative no greater tissue of falsehood 
was ever packed into printer's ink; and, if not for deliberate 
mendacity then for drivelling and idiotic nonsense, commend 
me to this monumental ignoramus. It has been more than half 
a century since slavery w^as extinguished on this continent. The 
renown of the South in statesmanship, in arms and in letters 
has been re-inforeed by an era of industrial miracles which has 
thrilled the civilized world; and for such an article to appear 
in a recent edition of a standard encyclopedia there is absolutely 
no excuse. Here is certainly a ghost for Horatio to address, ?i 
ghost with the brimstone smell of the Inferno upon him; and 
when I received your invitation, sir, to deliver this oration, I 
said to myself: I will bring this message to the bright young 
intellects of Georgia's university. I Avill bid them speak to the 
specters. In the name of our brave people who have so long 
suffered in silence, let us nail this slander at the bar of public 
sentiment in Georgia and let us drive this sulphur-scented 
spook back to his native fires in Pandemonium. 

6 



Before entering upon this task let our gaze rest for a moment 
upon the prisoner at the bar. The purest Caucasian blood on 
this continent ripples today in Southern veins. It blooms in 
these bright young faces. It throbs in this splendid audience. 
The names of our people are linked in gentle traditions with the 
oldest orders of knighthood. They are found not only in the 
parish registers of the British Isles, of France and of Normandy, 
but in the royal patents of the ancient nobilities. There is less 
of the obnoxious foreign element in the South than in any other 
part of the Union ; there is also less of nihilism and less of so- 
cialism. Stretch your gaze from Sandy Hook to San Francisco, 
and where can you find such love of temperance, such hatred 
of graft, such faith in an orthodox religion, .such loyalty to the 
nation's flag, such fidelity to the marriage tie, and such homage 
of chivalry at the shrine of woman? Uncontaminated by any 
base foreign admixture, ours is the old Revolutionary blood of 
Cowpens and of King's Mountain. Today the republic's lamp 
of hope is lit upon the Blue Eidge Mountains. Cotton is king. 
Half of the human race is today clothed with the fieece of our 
Southern fields. Yet we are the people who are named in this 
bill of indictment — ours the section which must answer to this 
catalogue of complaints. 



But let the trial proceed. 

Count number one. We have never, at any time in our 
history — for the education of our people — been dependent, in 
any helpless sense, upon the North. The second oldest institu- 
tion of learning in America is William and Mary College, at 
Williamsburg, Va., chartered in 1693 by the Crown of England. 
It was here that our society was founded, the first of all college 
orders symbolized by Greek letters. On its alumni rolls we find 
the names of three presidents, under whom the original territory 
of the Union was trebled in extent — Jefferson, Monroe and 
Tyler; and from this same institution came Chief -Justice John 
Marshall and General Winfield Scott. There is Hampden-Sid- 
ney College, founded in 1776, the alma mater of William Henry 
Harrison. There is South Carolina College, to which Jefferson 
sent his grandsons. There is the University of Virginia, which 
the great Sage of Monticello himself founded; and there is the 



College of Charleston. The first college in America to be fos- 
tered by State aid — an institution founded amid the smoke of 
the Revolution — was old Franklin College at Athens; while the 
first seminary in the Avorld to confer a degree upon a woman 
was historic old Wesleyan Female College at Macon. Now and 
then we have sent students to New England, but most of our 
leaders have been educated at home. One of the few to be 
educated at the North was John C. Calhoun. He was tutored at 
Yale ; and since New England, in 1815, was threatening to leave 
the Union, when Southern soldiers under Andrew Jackson 
were fighting the Republic's battle at New Orleans, she can 
hardly demur if her pupil — the great Nullifier — imbibed some 
of his political philosophy while meditating upon the science of 
government under the elms of New Haven. 

Far be it from me to sound a sectional note. I believe in 
the widest of horizons. I plead for a patriotism which embraces 
all America. If any boy in Georgia wishes to study 
at the North, let him go. But I do say this : All over Dixie-land, 
great universities are piercing the sky. They are scattered like 
gems over every State, from Virginia to Texas. But even were 
it not so — even were ours the onh'' college south of Baltimore, 
there would still exist no reason under high heaven for any 
youth of the South to leave his home, even for the ripest culture 
of the Greeks, so long as our Temple of Minerva shall here crown 
this green Acropolis of Athens ! 

To find an explanation for the strange vagaries which exist 
concerning the South, it is not necessary to borrow the lantern 
of Diogenes. Most of the books which have represented to the 
M'orld our intellectual activities have borne a Northern imprint. 
The shrewd Puritan — let us tip our hat to him — was quick to 
perceive the value of printer's ink: and he spread it over every- 
thing in sight, from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. The result is 
what might have been expected. It gave to New England — 
shall we say it — an exaggerated importance upon the map. 
Though not the first to wield a pen, she was the first to make 
literature a profession. With the Southerner of the old school, 
literature was never an end in itself. If not a pastime, it was 
a bi-product, incident to the pursuit of intellectual studies. 
Some of our best productions existed only in manuscript. ' ' Full 
many a gem of purest ray serene" flashed only in the eyes of 



lady fair. Consequently, in the great anthologies compiled by 
Northern editors, the achievements of the South have been eith- 
er minimized or ignored. The inference is that we have accom- 
plished nothing. We are somewhat in the plight of a certain 
Capt. Miles Standish, of Plymouth. Too busy making history 
to court a wife and too modest to blow his own horn, he let 
John Alden do his talking for him; and what did John do but 
elope with Priscilla. 



But the facts of history cannot be forever falsified. ' ' Truth 
crushed to earth wdll rise again." I do not need to remind an 
intelligent audience that the cradle of English civilization on 
this continent was rocked at Jamestown in Virginia, the primi- 
tive colonial seat of the Cavaliers. The first trial by jury, the 
first legislative assembly, and the first experiment in free gov- 
ernment in the western hemisphere, all date to this pioneer 
settlement at Jamestown ; and here, too, the first system of pop- 
ular education was planned by English gentlemen. It is not 
to Plymouth Rock, therefore, but to tide-water Virginia that we 
must look for the beginnings of American letters. Tell it not 
in Gath. Publish it not on the streets of Askalon. But from the 
pen of Capt. John Smith has come the first map on record of 
the rock-bound coast of New England; and to this roistering 
Cavalier of Jamestown the Puritan commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts is today indebted for her earliest knowledge of the landing 
place of her Pilgrims. 

From the Declaration of Independence down to the Edict 
of Emancipation, the most precious documents of our govern- 
ment were framed by Southern men. No single piece of litera- 
ture is more frequently cited by statesmen, of whatever school 
of politics, than is the farewell address of the nation's first 
president ; and no maxims have been more influential in shaping 
life and character than have the simple rules of conduct pre- 
scribed by Washington. The decisions of the country's greatest 
judges, the enactments of its wisest laAv-makers, the letters of 
its shrewdest diplomats, the masterful speeches of its foremost 
orators, these are our trophies. 

If we include Mr. Lincoln, the South has furnished to the 
executive chair of the nation not less than twelve presidents. 



The State papers which they have drafted — the messages trans- 
mitted by them to Congress — the political policies which they 
have shaped — these are enduring contributions to the republic 
of letters. 

In the domain of science we can boast of John and Joseph 
LeConte, "the Gemini of the scientific heavens" — both gradu- 
ates of this institution. High on the honor roll of genius glitters 
the name of Audubon, the prince of American ornithologists. 

The laying of the Atlantic cable was admittedly one of the 
greatest of modern achievements. It solemnized the marriage 
rites betw^een two hemispheres and obliterated an ocean. The 
M^ay for this colossal enterprise was paved by a volume entitled, 
"The Physical Geography of the Sea." It was the work of a 
Southern man of science, to whom Cyrus W. Field has paid 
this tribute : " I did the work, England supplied the funds, but 
Matthew F. Maury, of Virginia, furnished the brains." 

In the field of history we have not been idle. The list of 
our historians includes Ramsay and Lawson and McCrady and 
Jones and Derry. It also includes "Light Horse Harry" Lee 
and Thos. R. R. Cobb, and Alexander H. Stephens and Jefferson 
Davis, and Thomas E. Watson and Woodrow Wilson, and last 
but not least our o^^ai gifted guardian of the South 's immortal 
things: Mildred Rutherford. 

The earliest of American humorists was the pioneer Virginia 
planter and magistrate, Colonel William Byrd. Southerners, 
too, were Bagby and Baldwin and Longstreet and Hooper and 
Thompson — to say nothing of our owm genial philosopher, Bill 
Arp. Even the humor of Mark Twain is distinctively Southern. 

On the banks of the Chattahoochee lies an old Presbyterian 
preacher whose fame is immortal — the author of "The Young 
Marooners," Dr. Francis R. Goulding. 

The only American writer — so far as I know — whose books 
have been translated into seventeen different languages is Joel 
Chandler Harris. As the creator of Uncle Remus he is unsur- 
passed among the writers of modern fiction. The exploits of 
Brer Rabbit are nursery classics in both hemispheres. Mr, 
Harris, with his cabin songs of the old regime, has literally 
put a girdle of music around the globe, and even in the library 
of the New England scholar, has made the Southern cotton 
patch as classic as the Roman arena. 

10 



Second only to Mr. Harris in the interpretation of negro 
character comes Thomas Nelson Page, the author of "Mars 
Chan." Nor must we forget Armistead Churchill Gordon and 
"Will Allen Dromgoole and Harry Stillwell Edwards. But the 
real pioneer in the field of negro dialect was a young Mississip- 
pian, who died at the age of twenty-six: Irwin Russell. 

Before the late war between the States, an American author 
who rivalled Fenimore Cooper in his stories of pioneer life was 
"William Gilmore Simms. 

Perhaps the sweetest of the old-time novelists — may her 
grave beside the gulf be always green — was our o\^ai Augusta 
Evans "Wilson. 

To present day writers of fiction, the South has been the 
most industrious, the most brilliant, and the most successful of 
contributors ; and first upon this long list stands a Georgia 
woman: Corra White Harris. The Kentucky mountaineers 
have been portrayed by John Fox; those of Georgia by Will N. 
Harben; and those of Tennessee by Charles Egbert Craddock. 
The Creoles of Louisiana have been delineated by George W. 
Cable ; the backwoodsman of Arkansas by Ruth McEnery Stu- 
art; and the Kentucky poor whites by Alice Hegan Rice. The 
colonial period of our history has furnished inspiration to Mary 
Johnston ; the Civil War period has been sketched by Cooke and 
Eggleston ; and the period of Reconstruction by that many-sided 
genius, Thomas Dixon. Settlement work has engaged the pen 
of Katharine P. Woods. Sociological problems have supplied! 
materials to Octave Thanet and to Elizabeth Robins. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett, the creator of "Little Lord 
Fauntleroy, ' ' spent the formative period of her life in Tennessee ; 
while Amelia E. Barr resided for years in Texas, a State from 
whose history she caught some of her happiest inspirations. The 
first short-story writer of our generation was 0. Henry. James 
Lane Allen's masterpiece, "The Choir Invisible," marked an 
epoch in the artistic development of the American novel. 

But what of our contributions to the ars poetica? It is now 
conceded by critics on both sides of the water that the most 
original and the most creative genius of any poet in America 
was possessed by our melancholy child of the Muses, the immor- 
tal author of ' ' The Raven. ' ' 



11 



"If into our charnel-house of fame 

Only the dead can go; 
Then write not there the living name 

Of Edgar Allan Poe." 

Richard Henry Wilde's famous poem, "My Life is Like the 
Summer Rose," was pronounced by Lord Byron to be the finest 
American poem. Our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled 
Banner, ' ' was struck amid the carnage of battle from the patri- 
otic brain of Francis Scott Key. It was from the pen of an 
exiled son of Baltimore, James Ryder Randall, that the greatest 
of martial lyrics leaped into life, "Maryland, My Maryland." 

The only American poem to receive official recognition from 
the United States government is Theodore O'Hara's immortal 
elegy, "The Bivouac of the Dead." It is found today in all 
the national cemeteries lettered upon tablets of iron. 

"Nor will his glory be forgot 

While Fame her record keeps 
Or Honor points the hallowed spot 

Where Valor proudly sleeps." 

Father Ryan's "Conquered Banner" will live while the 
firmament endures. 

Time would fail me to mention all. But radiant on the 
scroll of the immortals are Timrod and Tieknor and Hayne and 
Flash and Requier and Margaret J. Preston and James Barron 
Hope and Alexander B. Meek and Madison J. Cawein who 
have passed away, and Stanton and Hubner and Malone and 
Peck who linger with us still. 

In a distant grave beside the Chesapeake — remote from the 
ashes of his kindred — sleeps one whom we must not forget. Ev- 
ery breeze from the marshes of Glynn — every note in the song of 
the Chattahoochee — every rustle of the wind amid the corn — 
every flush of sunrise in the East is eloquent of Georgia's silent 
singer. Two years ago I stood beside his grave in Baltimore and 
looked upon its flowering ivy, green like his own fadeless im- 
mortelles. What then I said in the silence of an unworded 
thought, I now voice in the accents of this serious hour : Can we 
not bring him back to Georgia? Is it not meet that, in the old 
mother's lap, with the encircling arms of her roses around him 

12 



— where sleep the playmates of his j'outh and the comrades of 
his warfare — there, too, should sleep till the morning wakes 
him that prince-imperial of all our Southern poets, Sidney 
Lanier. 



Does this rapid resume suggest any dependence upon New 
England ? We respect what she has contributed to letters. We 
admire Lowell. We love Longfellow and Whittier. Now and 
then M^e read Oliver Wendell Holmes. But we are under no 
compulsion of famine to import these authors, and if need be 
we could do without them all. It is time for the South to take 
an inventory of what she possesses within her own borders, for 
as well might Arabia send to Lapland for her perfumes, while 
breathing an air pungent with the aroma of her own spices. 

Ours is a land of memories. Tradition and environment have 
combined to make the South the very home of Romance. The 
burning plowshares of battle have harrowed her soil from Vir- 
ginia to Texas. The blood which ripples her veins has reddened 
the tilt-yards of chivalry both in England and in France. Her 
sky overhead is an inverted chalice of gold. Every tree on her hill- 
sides is a choir-loft of music, every stretch of her landscape a 
garden of Gul. Gallantry at the South has lisped in numbers from 
the very cradle; and love-making amongst us — God save the 
mark — though shy of type, has never lacked for meter. Not in the 
market-place of books, but in the bower of Rosalind and under- 
neath the balcony of Juliet, we have literally plumed Shakes- 
peare without number — besides which we have produced a Pe- 
trarch for every Laura and a Burns for every Highland Mary. 

But so prodigal has been the South 's dowry of genius that 
she has treated her treasures with neglect. In the spacious 
days, "our harpers were at the feast, but no one called for the 
song." We allowed to perish underneath our feet many an 
uncut diamond which New England would have polished. We 
permitted to die upon the air many an anthem which Old Eng- 
land would have nurtured on her breast until it journeyed with 
Tennyson's immortal "Brook." We sentenced to obscurity 
many a name which Rome would have ennobled and left un- 
decorated many a brow which Athens would have wreathed. 
Our sons and daughters so often picnicked with the muses and 

13 



poetry was so native to our soil that we never stopped to realize 
our riches and left our gold ungarnered in our harvest fields. 

Away with the sophism that the tropical sun takes the poetic 
fire out of Anglo-Saxon veins. Most of the world's great mas- 
terpieces of art have been produced in the warmer latitudes. 
Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Paradiso, Bocaccio's 
Decameron, Cellini's Perseus, Michael Angelo's Last Judg- 
ment, Raphael's Transfiguration, Greece's Temples, Egypt's 
Pyramids and David's Psalms — these have all bloomed in the 
ardent airs which sweep the harp-strung shores of the Mediter- 
ranean. Too hot. Was there ever penned such an unscientific 
statement? The truth of the matter is, Lord Angus, thou hast 
lied. 



I repeat what every school-boy in America knows by 
heart when I remind you that the keel of our national ship 
of state was laid by Southern men. When the iniquities of the 
Stamp Act w^ere perpetrated upon us and we needed a voice of 
articulate fire to denounce these usurpations, it w^as our forest- 
born Demosthenes who stepped into the breech. Aye, sir, it 
w^as the South w^hose Patrick Henry kindled the fires of the 
Revolution — whose Jefferson w^rote the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence — whose Washington commanded the Continental 
armies — whose Madison framed the Constitution — wdiose Mar- 
shall interpreted the organic law — wdiose Andrew Jackson 
fought the battle of New^ Orleans, and whose Winfield Scott 
planted Old Glory upon the walls of Mexico. Aye, it was the 
South to whom the Union was indebted for existence ; and, if 
from 1861 to 1865, she drew her sword against the Union's flag, 
it was in defence of the Union's Constitution. 

Nor was it African slavery for which the South con- 
tended, but Anglo-Saxon freedom. 

From the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1787 to 
the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the South, in an almost 
unbroken chain of succession, occupied the presidential chair 
of the nation. She made the treaties with foreign countries. 
She named the judges of the Supreme Court. She controlled 
both houses of Congress. She fought with little help from 
New England the war of 1812 and the war with Mexico. Al- 

14 



most the entire Northwest Territory belonged originally to 
Virginia. It was hers by charter, by exploration, and by 
conquest. Louisiana was purchased by Jefferson. Florida was 
acquired by Monroe. Texas was annexed to the Union under 
Tyler. California and New Mexico were acquired by Polk; 
and, if exception be made of the single territory of Alaska, 
almost the entire continental domain of the United States bears 
testimony to the fact that the all-conquering blood of the Ar- 
yan race, instead of degenerating in the veins of the South- 
ern people, has brought to our statesmanship and to our pa- 
triotism the purest crimson of the mother-strain. 

With the single exception of Washington, the only other 
American who founded an empire was Sam Houston, of Texas. 

Much is today heard of the Monroe Doctrine. Its author 
sleeps beside the James, on the silent hills of Hollywood. 

To the persistent hammering of an Alabama Senator — John 
T. Morgan — we owe the Panama Canal. 

Tippecanoe and Tyler, too, were both Virginians. So also 
was the hero of Buena Vista, Zachary Taylor. Two of the 
great triumvirate of American statesmen were from the South: 
the mill-boy of the slashes (Henry Clay), and the shaggy-haired 
old nullifier of the Senate (John C. Calhoun). It was two of 
the South 's pioneer explorers who discovered the source of 
the Missouri River and opened to commerce the great empire 
of the West. It was Missouri's matchless Benton who foreshad- 
owed a highway of steel across the prairies when pointing to 
the far Pacific he exclaimed: "There is the East. There lies 
the road to India." It was Maryland's brave Admiral Schley 
who, in 1898, submerged the Spanish fleet at Santiago and 
crowned the work commenced by Oglethorpe at Bloody Marsh, 
when he confirmed America to the Anglo-Saxon. 

The Carolinas — our nearest neighbors — have been specially 
named in this bill of indictment. But it was the Old North 
State's Scotch-Irish patriots who voiced America's earliest 
protest against the oppressions of England. It was her gallant 
ensign, Worth Bagley, who, in the late Spanish-American War, 
laid the first red rubies upon Freedom's altar; and not while 
her history tells of Mecklenberg and of Alamance can any 
lover of liberty point at her the finger of derision. Nor will 

15 



South Carolina be forgotten while the genius of the great 
Calhoun is revered; while the Pinekneys and the Rutledges, 
the Legares and the McDuflfies, the Sumters and the Marions, 
are enshrined in the republic's heart; or while, folded to her 
bosom, in old St. Michael's churchyard, sleeps he (Robert Y. 
Hayne), who smote the mane of the great Webster and roused 
the New England lion to his loudest roar. 

If there are planters in this audience, they do not need to 
be informed that to the productive value of American farming 
lands the reaper has added millions upon millions of dollars. 
It was the invention of a native Virginian, Cyrus H. McCor- 
mick. The gigantic tunnel of the Pennsylvania Railroad un- 
derneath the Hudson River has changed the whole commerce 
of the City of New York. It was the achievement of a native 
Georgian — our present Secretary of the Treasury — William G. 
McAdoo. The first sewing machine was invented not by Howe 
or Thirmonnier, but by Francis R. Goulding, a Georgian. The 
first steamboat was invented not by Fulton or Rumsay or Fitch, 
but by William Longstreet, a Georgian ; and in my office at the 
State Capitol is the record of a patent issued to Longstreet 
and Briggs for a steamboat, dated February 1, 1788 — fifteen 
months hefore WasMncjton ivas inaugurated, and nineteen 
years before the Clermont plotved the Hudson. The first vessel 
propelled by steam to cross the Atlantic Ocean sailed, in 1819, 
from the port of Savannah. The greatest boon ever conferred 
upon suffering humanity by scientific research and experiment 
was the discovery of anesthesia. It put an end to the terrors of 
the knife, made surgery a painless art, and prolonged the 
average length of human days — all by deadening our sensi- 
bilities ''in the twilight sleep of the gods." For the honor 
of having achieved this victory over pain, there were four 
competitors ; but the palm has at last been incontestably award- 
ed to a Georgia doctor whose grave is on the hillsides of 
Athens, Dr. Crawford W. Long. 

Yet, we are only mere cyphers. We have literally accom- 
plished nothing. We are simply satellites of New England. 
Was a fouler falsehood ever fathered? Blot from American 
history the achievements of the South and you blot American 
history from the chronicles of time. 

16 



If further proof be needed of the South 's marvelous vi- 
tality, we find it in the little episode of American history from 
1861 to 1865. There were only eleven States in the Southern 
Confederacy. We were confronted on every side by superior 
numbers and resources. We were unrecognized by the Euro- 
pean powers. Our ports were blockaded, and the ratio of bat- 
tle was four to one. But it took an army of 2,800,000 men just 
four years to march one hundred miles over level ground from 
Washington to Richmond. The valley campaigns of Stone- 
wall Jackson are studied in the military schools of England. 
Critics like Lord Wollesley, Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Fran- 
cis Adams and George R. Wendling have not hesitated to 
pronounce Lee the greatest of modern captains. I have been 
to some extent a student of history, but I challenge the chron- 
icles for six thousand years to surpass the fighting power of 
the Confederate soldier ; and I doubt if the empires which have 
risen and fallen with the tides of time since Rameses ruled in 
Egypt can match the prowess of the little government which, 
without an army or a navy to make good its defiance in 1861, 
summoned its babes from the cradle and its veterans from the 
tomb, unfurled its flag of only eleven stars and after four long 
years of splendid battle perished like an Atlas beneath an 
overpowering world. 

Sir, I never knew what a Babel of tongues was unloosed 
upon the South until I visited the Federal Soldiers' Home at 
Hampton, Va., and found the inmates reading newspapers, it 
seemed to me, in every language under heaven. I love to look 
upon the granite shafts. But the tallest monument ever erec- 
ted to the Confederate soldier is found in the pension rolls of 
the Federal government. I know wdiereof I speak when I say 
that on those rolls are the names of more disabled veterans of 
the other side than there were soldiers mustered in the Con- 
federate ranks. 

But P-O wonder he could fight. His blood was the purest of the 
purple strain. It was beauty's hand that buckled on his belt, 
and eight hundred years before his birth he was trained by his 
ancestors in the tiltyards of the tournament. We were told 
some time ago by an eminent divine of New York that the 
South was virtually dead when the conflict started. Without 

17 



stopping to ask how much of credit is due our friends at the 
North for defeating a foe in whom the life was already extinct, 
let me merely say that if the South was lifeless in 1861, she was 
represented on the battle-field by the most stubborn and robust 
apparition of which we have any account since the ghost of 
Banquo disturbed the peace of Scotland. 



But the queen was worthy of her knight. In the days of 
Dixie's tribulation no truer hearts enshrined the cause and no 
purer patriots bore the flag. They knelt each night in Gethsem- 
ane's olive gloom. No music of the drum for them — no ec- 
stacy of battle — no elbow touch of comradeship around the 
camp-fires. In an area of country exposed to the perils of in- 
vasion, they suffered the severest ordeals and endured the bit- 
terest privations which the war entailed, but be it said to the 
credit of the Southern women that they were the very last to 
surrender. 

When the drum-tap summoned the flower of the South to 
arms, the wife relinquished her husband at the altar and the 
aged mother faltered at the grave-side : "Here is my only boy." 
No maiden smiled upon the youth who skulked at home. To 
nurse the child of battle, the patrician blood of Dixie bore 
ten thousand Florence Nightingales. Whenever Sir Laun- 
eelot was unhorsed on the field of combat, there were fair 
Elaines without number to caress his fevered brow, and at 
every couch of sufl^ering the beautiful Rebeccas bent over the 
wounded Ivanhoes. Throughout the whole of Dixie-land, 
Cornelia pledged her jewels, Dorcas plied her busy needle, 
Miriam sang her battle-hymns, and Mary watched while Mar- 
tha served. 

Nor have these true hearts ever wearied. Through the 
years which have come and gone, they have reared the monu- 
ments and lifted the slabs and kept the hillocks green. It was 
on Georgia's soil that Memorial Day was born, and on Geor- 
gia's soil rises the first tribute of stone ever erected to the Con- 
federate woman. Well she deserves the shaft. In the lexicon 
of her love there is no such word as "forget." Like the 
temple-fires which were kept by the vestal virgins, the flames 
have never died upon the hearthstone at which she ministers. 
Un withered still are the forget-me-nots in the rose- jar of her 

18 



memories — fragrant the spikenard in her alabaster box. The 
ivy-leaves of her love still clutch the mouldering walls of the 
past, and though the splendor of the tabernacle of the old 
South has departed, the heart of the daughter of Dixie is still 
an ark of the covenant in which the ancient manna of the Con- 
federacy is kept. It lies not in the power of mortal man to im- 
peach the civilization which produced the like of her : our 
war-queen of the sixties. 



To my mind it is one of the anomalies of history that the 
South, besides supplying her own ranks, also re-enforced her 
foes. She gave to the Union navy, Admiral Farragut, the 
greatest of the Federal sea captains. She gave to the Union 
army, General George H. Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga. 
She gave to the White House in Washington the martyred. 
Lincoln, who presided over the government with which she was 
at war, and when he fell by the assassin's bullet, she named his 
successor in office, Andrew Johnson, 

If either section of the Union has shone with light borrowed 
from the other it must be the North ; and when, in defiance of 
the truth of history, we are told that ours is but the reflected 
light of New England, they might as well go the whole length 
of the tether and, in spite of the teachings of Galileo and Co- 
pernicus, tell us that the mid-day sun in heaven is but the re- 
flected glory of "the moon. 



But let us pass to the picture which this accomplished ar- 
tist draws of the Southern planter. We are told that he was 
indolent, that he was brutal, and that, paralyzed by his own 
self-importance, he was absolutely dead to art. Great Caes- 
ar's ghost. If there was ever a Sir Philip Sidney — if, in all the 
tides of time, there ever trod this earth a character of whom it 
might be said, as was said of Hamlet's father: ''We shall not 
look upon his like again" — vvdio represented in his person the 
exquisite polish which comes from well-employed leisure — 
who possessed the most intimate acquaintance with books — 
who exemplified the very perfection of manners — who was a 
Chesterfield in courtesy and a Prince Rupert in courage — who 
wore his heart upon his sleeve, in tender compassion for his 

19 



slaves — who was a patrician from the crown of his head to the 
sole of his shoe, but a commoner in the milk of human kindness 
— who despised sham and falsehood and deceit even more than 
he hated the mushroom aristocracy of parvenues — whose chas- 
tity of honor felt a stain like a wound and whose loyalty to 
woman made him the "beau ideal" of Cavaliers when knight- 
hood was in flower — it was the old time Southern gentleman. 

I am not the apologist of slavery. I hold no brief for an 
institution whose grave was dug at Appomattox. It was 
unquestionably an evil. It made us an agricultural, when we 
ought to have been an industrial people. It discouraged man- 
ufacture. It tended to bring manual labor into disrepute. It 
checked the growth of cities. It was characterized by wrongs 
to both races ; and while not the cause, it was the occasion of 
the war. But for the existence of this evil we of the South 
stand acquitted before the bar of history and we can solemnly 
protest with more of truth than did Macbeth : 

"Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake 
Thy gory locks at me." 
I wish to fan no embers of discord and to reopen no wounds 
of strife. But let me ask this : Under M^hat circumstances did 
the negro, who was a savage in Africa, become a slave on this 
continent. It was the Dutch who, on the coast of Virginia, 
landed the first cargo of African slaves ; but, to quote the 
historian Bancroft, a Northern man, in less than fifty years, 
our foreign slave traffic was carried on almost exclusively 
by the colonies of New England. Most of the slave vessels 
were owned by Puritan financiers and officered by Puritan 
captains. How much the slave tralifie added to New England's 
coffers, I cannot tell, but it provided many a turkey for Puritan 
Thanksgivings. Speak it not above a whisper, but Peter 
Paneuil, who built old Paneuil Hall — the cradle of American 
liberty — made the bulk of his fortune out of traffic in negro 
slaves. Newport, R. I., was literally founded upon the profits 
of the system ; and, on the authority of Stephen Hopkins, a 
Governor of the State, Rhode Island, in 1770, had one hundred 
and fifty vessels flying the slave trader's flag. When the Dutch 
settled New York, they were not satisfied with shackling the 
black man. They sought to enslave the Indian ; and Wall 

20 



Street — our great highway of finance — marks the line where 
once ran a wall, the purpose of Avhich was to keep the red man 
from driving the Dutch slave-catchers over the battery into the 
Atlantic Ocean. 

It is an interesting fact that, under the government of the 
trustees, Georgia was the only one of the English colonies in 
which slavery was prohibited by law. For sixteen years — from 
1733 to 1749 — not a drop of rum and not a shackle of servi- 
tude were permitted upon Georgia's free soil. Our largest 
slave-holders, as a class, were the settlers at Midway, all of 
whom were full-blooded Puritans. Less than five per cent, of 
those who composed our armies were slave-holders, an astound- 
ing fact, in view of what is commonly taught. 

Ulysses S. Grant, commander-in-chief of the Federal armies 
owned slaves which were not released, I am told, until Lincoln's 
edict of emancipation ; while Robert E. Lee, our own great cap- 
tain, released his slaves in 1863, and was not, therefore, a slave- 
holder when the great edict was signed. 

With respect to the moral aspects of slavery, we cannot 
fail to note that New England's conscience upon this subject 
was strangely dormant for more than a hundred years, even 
under the stern preaching of Jonathan Edwards. When it did 
awake at last, like Rip Van Winkle, it failed to take any ac- 
count of the fact that if it were wrong to buy slaves it was 
equally wrong to sell slaves, especially since the slaves which 
she sold to us cost her nothing except an African hunt. The 
forces which fastened the institution upon us were purely and 
wholly economic. The original habitat of the black man was 
equatorial Africa. It stands to reason, therefore, that he was 
better adapted to the warmer than to the colder latitudes; 
and when the cotton gin was invented there was naturally an 
increased demand for negro labor in the cotton fields. So what 
New England mistook for her conscience was in reality nothing 
but her climate ; while the standard which fixed her attitude 
to slavery was not the Mosaic law but the Fahrenheit thermom- 
eter. To quote Senator Ingalls, himself a native of Massachu- 
setts, the conscience of New England in regard to slavery did 
not hurt her until she began to miss her profits. We are all 
familiar with the story of the Hartford Convention ; and in this 

21 



connection it is somewhat curious to speculate upon what 
might have been the issues of American history if the cotton 
plant had been indigenous to the Connecticut valley or if the 
mercury had registered twenty degrees higher in the neigh- 
borhood of Bunker Hill Monument. 



Say W'hat you will in condemnation of slavery, but it did 
more to civilize and to christianize the African than has all the 
money and all the labor expended by missionaries on the Dark 
Continent since Livingstone entered the Congo. It not only 
taught him to work, but it left him as a free man with almost 
a monoply of the field in wdiicli he had been employed as a 
slave; and in 1865 there was not a body of negroes on the 
globe as well oif economically as were the negroes of the 
South. To the credit of this section be it said that we did not 
impress the negro into slavery, but we did teach him the mus- 
ical language of King Alfred, we did teach him to work, we 
did teach him to pray, and by telling him an old, old story, 
we did bind him in gentle bondage to a Heavenly Master. We 
did not requite his labor with wages, but we did recompense 
him in a thousand ways, we did minister to his temporal wants, 
we did put songs of contentment in his mouth, which sweet- 
ened all the harvest field, and we did endow him with a hap- 
piness in the freedom of slavery which he has not since found 
in the slavery of freedom. Of course, there were brutal slave- 
owners ; but the cruel treatment of slaves was mainly the work 
of overseers, who were often not of Southern birth. It was 
to the master's interest to care for his slaves, and nowhere on 
this planet has there ever existed kindlier feelings between 
two races than under the feudal system of ante-bellum days. 
Nor was it until interlopers came among us that this tender 
relationship was embittered. The Black Knight of the English 
tournament displayed no finer chivalry when he wrestled with 
Saladin for the Holy Land than did the Black Knight of the 
Southern plantation when he guarded the loved ones commit- 
ted to his care ; and, throughout all the four years of a war 
waged by the North to free him from slavery betrayed not his 
master's trust. In the old slave days there were no strikes 
and no insurrections; there were few negro fiends; lynch law 

22 



was unknown; and from 1861 to 1865 there was displayed no 
finer loyalty to either flag than was exhibited by the black man 
to his master. Blessings upon the dear old soul who, in the 
long ago, held my sainted mother in her sable arms and 
crooned her into childhood's slumber-land. Can I forget her? 
Not while the ruddy drops shall visit this warm heart. At 
Fort Mill, S. C, and elsewhere, monuments have been erected 
to faithful slaves, but I want to see the tallest, aye, and the 
whitest of them all erected to the old black mammy. 

This fact is well established : that out of the institution of 
slavery, the black man realized far more than did the white. 
It was a mistake to put the ballot in the negro's hand before 
he was qualified for suffrage — to confer upon him a boon for 
which Anglo-Saxons had battled since the days of Runnymede. 
But the tribute implied therein to the Southern people cannot 
be overlooked. When the convict lease system was under fire 
in 1896, I well remember an argument made by Colonel N. J. 
Hammond, an alumnus of this institution. Said he : " There 
were the Israelites. As slaves in Egypt they were brought in 
contact with the wonderful people who built the pyramids. 
They were themselves God's chosen seed — descended from 
Abraham and led by Moses. But before they were qualified for 
citizenship in the land of Canaan they were required to wander 
for forty years in the wilderness, and then only two of all the 
original two million entered the Promised Land — Caleb and 
Joshua. Yet the negro, whose ancestors were savages in 
Africa, was given the ballot without an hour's probation, was 
elected to State Legislatures, and even sent to the Senate of 
the United States. For this exalted honor, he was trained 
only by his master; and if this new departure in legislation 
was not the corrupt work of political demagogues, it was in 
the nature of the highest tribute ever paid to Southern civi- 
lization. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin was written to expose the evils of 
slavery in the South. But the system which produced an Un- 
cle Tom could not have been an unmixed evil and to every 
eulogist of Mrs. Stowe's book that system says: "Lift your 
hat." 



23 



Forever accursed be the carpet-bagger. In all the genera- 
tions of our South-land may his memory be abhorred. It was 
he who mixed the poison virus, whose polluted hands tore 
trusting hearts asunder. Not like a brave foe, but like a cow- 
ardly assassin he came amongst us, trailing his sinuous way, 
like a Satan into Paradise. 

"Skulking miscreant of the dust, 
Than what thou art I could not wish thee worse, 
Go with thy kindred reptiles, crawl and die. ' ' 
At times this infamous lago of Reconstruction even dared 
to wear the vestments of religion. But the only way in which 
such a mass of corruption can ever encumber the approaches 
to the New Jerusalem will be to sit among the lepers who groan 
outside the gates. He may have supped with Dives in the halls 
of power, but he can have no seat of honor in the halls of 
history. Even the faithful dogs will deny him the menial of- 
fices of brute compassion and he will linger upon the cheerless 
stones for eternity to punish : an unmitigated moral mendicant, 
redeemed by none of the soul and cursed with all of the sores 
of Lazarus. 



But I have wearied you enough. The burden of my message 
is simply this : Speak to the specters. It is your bounden duty 
as scholars. Speak to them as did the great Ben Hill when he 
exposed the Virginia readjuster — when he unhorsed the plumed 
knight — when, with Elijah's tongue of fire, he denounced the 
infamies of Reconstruction. Speak to them as did the fearless 
Jackson when he called down fire from heaven to consume the 
records of the Yazoo fraud. Speak to them as did the noble 
Jenkins when he said to the military usurpers : ' ' Touch not the 
holy seal of Georgia. ' ' Speak to them as did Howell Cobb when 
he resigned his seat in the Cabinet ; or when, in his great Bush 
Arbor speech, he longed for some blistering word with which to 
brand the forehead of wrong. Speak to them as did Robert 
Toombs when he bade adieu to the American Senate; as did 
Benjamin M. Palmer when he crushed the lottery of Louisiana; 
as did L. Q. C. Lamar when, at Sumner's bier, he rebuked the 
lingering memories of strife; as did the peerless Grady when, 
with David's sling, he slew the Goliath of sectional estrange- 

24 



ment and wrote upon his country's sky: "Love is the fulfilling 
of the law." 

So far as this particular ghost is concerned — this ghost of 
brazen falsehood — it is doomed. I bring you a message of good 
cheer and of hope. The morning cometh. There's a mist in 
the low-lands, but a light on the mountain-tops. The lark has 
already soared to meet the sun. Slowly, higher and higher, 
rises the incoming tide upon our beaches ; larger and larger 
grows the brightening rainbow above our w^ater-falls. All over 
Dixie-land, commerce is weaving her iron-web, industry is chant- 
ing her choral song, prosperity is lifting her banners to the sky. 

But, sir, it is not alone the clang of our forges, and the whir 
of our spindles, and the scream of our locomotives, that is call- 
ing to this foul trespasser to be gone. Deeper than all these, the 
flaming arrows of intellect are piercing it from ten thousand 
bended bows. Scholarship is no longer the exclusive heritage 
of the few; it is the common birth-right of the many. Those 
whom God hath annointed as his priests of learning must and 
will speak to the specters. Today, as never before, the scholar 
in politics is a potential factor in our government. 

Not long since, I witnessed an impressive spectacle : a modest 
professor, with ceremonies august but simple, is made president 
of Princeton University. At his side, in the inaugural proces- 
sion, walks an ex-president of the United States, then chairman 
of the board of trustees. Cleveland's day is done; but, on his 
companion's brow, the star of destiny is kindled. Eight years 
later this same college president becomes governor of the great 
State of New Jersey. Two more years elapse, and in a crisis 
of our nation's history, he is called to fill the exalted chair of 
Washington. Bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, he is one 
of us, a product of the South; and, when the great battle of 
ballots is over in November next, Victory will pronounce his 
name : Woodrow Wilson. 

The republic's battle-hymn today is "Dixie." Both wings 
of the Federal Legislature are at last soundly Democratic. The 
Speaker of the National House of Representatives is a native 
of the blue-grass commonwealth of Kentucky. The chief-justice 
of the Supreme Court Avas a private soldier in Lee's ragged 
army, proud of the gray badge of his Confederate knighthood ; 
and, to cap the glorious climax, the army of Northern Virginia 

25 



has crossed the Potomac and, beneath the central dome of the 
nation's capitol, clad in his uniform of gray and bedecked with 
his immortal sword, stands the noblest Roman of them all — 
Robert E. Lee. 

Our deliverance has come. We thrill to its music as did 
Bessie Brown at Lucknow, when she caught the sweet air of 
"Auld Lang Syne" from the highland pipes of Havelock. Out 
there in the dark is the old specter of injustice, but, advancing 
to meet it, we can hear the tramp of an army of Horatios. On 
they come ! Beneath ever-thickening banners, see them gather ! 
In this year of grace, when a new chief-magistrate is to be 
chosen, let us rally to the standard of that great scholar in poli- 
tics who is rebuking the specters of our national life, who is 
keeping us at peace with all the world, but permitting no stigma 
of dishonor to rest upon Old Glory's clustered stars. Let us 
throv; off the lethargy of sleep which has bound us like Prome- 
theus to the rock. Let us catch into our eyes the fire of our 
summer lightnings. Let us put into our voices the thunder of our 
mountain cataracts; and, wielding a lash of scorpions in our 
uplifted hands, let us say to this monster from the Night's 
Plutonian shore : ' ' Get thee back into the tempest, thou fiend of 
Erebus, and leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul 
hath spoken. ' ' 



26 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 440 987 5 



